RIM (Research in Motion), the Canadian owner of the BlackBerry smartphones have reportedly purchased NewBay, a company that deals with cloud computing services. The purchase, finer details of which have not been revealed by RIM yet is worth over $100 million confirmed RIM.
With Apple readying itself to offer its iCloud services when iOS 5 debuts in the next few days, it seems RIM too wants to jump in to the cloud services bandwagon as a value added offering for BlackBerry users. Apart from offering its users real time data syncing between various BlackBerry devices this acquisition could also end up in providing BlackBerry with an additional revenue stream.
If we are to see Newbay’s current offerings, you will realize that they offer services similar to iCloud – albeit in a licensing model. Their products include services that lets users store multimedia content like pictures, videos, and music in the cloud which they can then access with their devices and also share with other users. NewBay also has quite a few “important” clients that include T-Mobile USA, Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica O2, France Telecom Orange, U.S. Cellular, AT&T, Telstra, Verizon, and LG Electronics.
It is unclear if Newbay’s acquisition by RIM would affect its current business model. Anyway, if RIM does introduce a cloud service in the next few months, we surely shouldn’t be surprised!
[Via AllThingsD]
